


Graveyard Shift

by Rotpeach



Series: Every Nuance of Misfortune [4]
Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novel)
Genre: Necrophilia, Other, POV First Person, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 11:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8531233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: You and Strade have a misunderstanding and nobody leaves happy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> theres gonna be like one more quiet part in this series and then
> 
> then it gets really good

She cries out for me.

Her voice comes in harsh whispers, cold like wind in a tunnel; quick, ferocious and desperate, no discernable words. But we don’t need words. We just need to be able to touch and we can understand each other.

She doesn’t smell rancid or sharp like rust and rot, even as she drips maggots all over the sheets, wriggling loose from the tears in her face.

(The ones _he_ put there, and I shouldn’t be jealous but I am, jealous that he was the one to find her, that he had her first, that he didn’t appreciate what he had and she’s rotting now, she’s falling apart and she won’t last like this.)

She is splayed beneath me, motionless,

(patient, so patient for me)

ankles slashed open, red and glistening, a pulpy consistency where he started to cut off her feet before he changed his mind and just let the wound fester. She looks at me with her good eye, the one that isn’t just a red-brown gouge, muscles and maggots, but the thin gray membrane writhes with life beneath and within.

She is beautiful, pale lips slightly parted, and she whispers,

(I swear she does, she whispers to me, her tongue turning a sickly bottle green and yet she speaks,)

_“I want you.”_

And I want her, too, more than anything, and I say as much. I tell her I want her, I need her, need to feel her soft and cool in my hands and against my body, and I know she feels the same.

 _“Touch me,”_ she begs, her words little more than the weak hiss of a death rattle, but I understand anyway, I always understand.

There is so much I want to know about her—who was she before? What was she like? What was she mourning on the night that Strade picked her up from The Braying Mule? Why did she make herself look so small, draw her shoulders in and keep her eyes on the bar counter, so that no one would see her when she disappeared forever?

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I tell her. I want her to know. “You shouldn’t have tried to make yourself invisible. You’re beautiful.”

She is grateful. I see it in her eyes,

(beneath fly eggs and larvae writhing and eating)

see that she needed to hear that.

 _“Hurry,”_ she is saying now, _“Please, I need you.”_

“I know,” I assure her, but she is insistent.

_“I need you. I need help. Please help me with this.”_

She sounds strange, louder and clearer. Her voice is harsh and I don’t like it.

_“Help me with this lumber, please?”_

It’s Jane.

Jane is standing in front of me in the store, struggling to lift a plank of basswood about as tall as she is. I blink, take in her impatient frown, and apologize sheepishly.

“It’s fine,” she says. “Just give me a hand?”

It felt real. It felt like she was there. I could smell her heady like petrichor and feel her smooth and cool under my hands. I try to clear my head as I come around the register counter to help Jane, lifting half of the lumber’s weight behind her.

“You’ve been spacing out a lot today,” she says.

“Oh.”

“That’s not really like you.”

I shrug even though she can’t see. The store is lively and crowded again today, wailing infants abandoned in shopping carts and impatient customers lined up at the cutting counter where the person in front has changed their mind twice. When I reach the lumber aisle and heft the wood up onto the shelf, Jane turns and asks, “Are you sleeping with him?”

I choke back a, “Who?” because of the way her brow is raised and she has her arms cross over her chest. We both know who she’s talking about. “No,” I say emphatically.

She smiles just a little. “You can tell me,” she says, leaning in and lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Or are you just going on dates right now? You looked pretty excited the last time he picked you up from work.”

“We went out for drinks,” I insist.

(A lie. He doesn’t go The Braying Mule for the drinks, and neither do I anymore.)

“What about the time before that?” Jane presses. “Or, you know, the time before that? You spend a lot of time together.”

I’m starting to think that it might’ve been better to say yes, but Jane’s eyes wander to a point over my shoulder, and I turn slowly as I hear a cart approaching.

“Hey, buddy,” he says with his usual friendly grin, and I give a weak greeting in response.

(He looks so unthreatening right now, so personable and kind, the sort of person someone might trust with their kids.)

“I wanted to ask you something, if you have a minute.”

I nod, glancing back briefly at Jane who simply smirks and makes a zipping motion across her lips before walking away, as if this is some terribly scandalous secret that I  need reassurance will never pass her lips.

(She has _no idea_ , but that’s nothing new.)

“She knows, huh?”

Strade’s voice is low when he asks, and I find his eyes following Jane’s obliviously retreating form as she disappears into the next aisle. “No, she doesn’t,” I say quickly. “She just…she thinks we’re…uh….”

I can feel my face heating in embarrassment. Strade must notice, because he catches on and cracks an amused smile. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d you tell her?”

I shrug and pretend to need to reorganize the shelf. “I tried to tell her we weren’t.”

“Why?”

“Because….” I hesitate and glance at him out of the corner of my eye. “Wh-what do you mean ‘why?’ Should I have said yes?”

“Doesn’t matter to me. It’s funny, though,” he chuckles. “She really doesn’t know you very well, or she’d know I'm not your type.”

“You said anyone could be my type.” I turn to look him in the eye when I say this, and he seems impressed.

“So you were paying attention.”

(He really thinks I don’t.

I can tell by the way he talks down to me, always in that same prideful and patronizing tone like it’s a lesson I’m supposed to learn.

But I listen closely every time, I memorize every word and I believe what he tells me. He would know, after all.

He’s told me that anyone can be beautiful, that true beauty comes out when a person is at their lowest and most vulnerable, that peeling back the skin and destroying the body and breaking the mind leaves behind the frightened and shivering animal that every human is deep down, and that nothing can compare to this.

And I believe him. I believe that this is true for him.

But my definition of beauty is different.)

“I could be your type,” he says, grinning, “but not the way I am now. Right?”

I nod stiffly, glancing around the aisle in paranoia, but Strade doesn’t seem to care.

“I could be exactly what you wanted if only I was a little colder. A little quieter.”

Strade does _something_ —it’s little more than the slightest tilt of his head and narrowing of his eyes, and it can’t be the lighting or the mood around us—and suddenly I see the same creature that slunk unnoticed into a bar and crept back out with prey on its arm.

“If I just laid there,” he goes on, “and never moved a muscle, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

I try to swallow the lump in my throat and ignore the heat that rushes through me. “We probably shouldn’t talk about this kind of thing in public.”

“Why not? Am I making you uncomfortable?” Suddenly, the affable handyman is back, face bright and smile wide. “Sorry, buddy. I don’t mean to.”

He’s doing it on _purpose_ , I know he is. He loves seeing me squirm.

“I’ve gotta get going,” he says casually. “Things to do, places to be.”

(People to kill and film for profit.)

I nod. “Yeah. Alright,” I say, and follow him to the front of the store to scan his purchases.

(A nail gun today. An older model with a contact trigger, the kind of thing most would avoid because of the risk of accidentally double-firing. I glance up from the box and find his smile widening.)

“I’ll swing by to pick you up again tonight,” he says. “I owe you a little something.”

“What?”

“You know. From last time.”

I look into his eyes and for the first time I see the hunger in there, masked by a superficial layer of false kindness. If I didn’t know what to look for, I probably wouldn’t see it at all. I remember looking out over an unsuspecting crowd crammed into the bar and later helping him lift a body into the trunk of his car.

It’s been a couple days, long enough that Strade’s probably gotten as much enjoyment as he possibly could have out of the man no one else paid any attention to. He’s probably dead. He’s probably going to get rid of him. He’s probably—

I nearly drop the price scanner as my hands begin to tremble and I realize that

he’s probably in the trunk.

Strade sees the moment I understand and tilts his head, smiling. “Now you’ve got something to look forward to.”

I nod shakily.

“See you then.”

For some reason, I feel jealous again, and I stare at his back as he leaves. Strade thinks he knows me better than I know myself, thinks he has me completely figured out, and he’s wrong. He doesn’t understand me at all. He doesn’t see where I’m coming from, doesn’t appreciate what I find beautiful.

But I understand him. I listen when he thinks I don’t. I learn from what he shows me. I’ve stayed under his wing long enough to know what I want and how to get it.

And I’m starting to think I don’t need him anymore.

(I don’t want an animal. I want another human.

I want someone whose love will never run out.)

*

I’ve been here before.

I step out of the car into complete darkness, eyes adjusting slowly as Strade takes his keys out of the ignition and the headlights die. It’s the same place as before, the same hasty turn he made to prove a point to me when I was still new at this.

(When he held me at gunpoint, made me undress, and forced me to the ground, and I thought I was going to die.)

I try not to look worried, but Strade notices.

(He notices everything. He always has. I don’t know why I ever tried to hide anything from a practiced predator.)

“You remember this place, don’t you?” he asks. I can’t quite make out his face in the dark, but I can hear the smile in his voice. “I tend to bury what’s left out here. I think the coyotes have started to expect it. I see them come out from the bushes sometimes when I’m driving away.”

“Oh.” I look at the dirt under my feet and wonder how many bones are down there. How many faces on missing posters have dissolved in the stomachs of worms right here.

“You can’t really see it now,” he says, walking around to the back of the car, “but during the day, it’s beautiful out here. Lots of wildflowers. They just spring up wherever I bury someone. That’s kind of poetic, isn’t it?”

I almost nod but give a verbal affirmation instead. I know he prefers to hear me.

Strade opens the trunk, and I smell it long before I see it.

He’s there.

There’s a strong chemical odor that barely masks the musky stench of early decay, dizzying and sickly sweet. I draw closer and I can make out his outline huddled in the back of Strade’s car, curled up as though cold or frightened. There’s dried blood caked to the side of his face and deep gashes in his legs and arms, bone peeking out through the wounds. The pallor of death creeps along his skin and makes splotches of livor mortis stand out along the front of his legs.

(He died on his knees, sitting up, held in place somehow, and Strade just left him there. Left him to decay rigid and upright.)

“Just your type, right?” Strade asks from far closer than I thought he was standing, right beside me, his side pressing against mine as he leans some of his weight on my shoulder.

I stare down at the man I saw at the bar, and it’s true that he’s my type and it’s true that I find him beautiful, but….

(She’s crying out for me.

She can’t believe I’d take this when I never had her.

 _She would’ve been so much bette_ r, she says, _she would’ve been my everything.)_

“You don’t like him?”

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there silently, but it must’ve been too long. Strade has that threatening look in his eyes, the same one from before, and before I can shrink back, he’s tightening his fingers around one of my wrists and speaking lowly and dangerously.

“What’s the problem?” he asks.

“There isn’t one,” I say.

(Stupid. That was stupid.

I can’t lie to him. I should know that by now.)

I hurriedly add, “There’s nothing wrong with him. I like him.”

“Then why are you just standing around?” he demands. “Why do you look so disappointed?”

(Don’t lie. That’ll just make it worse.)

I take a deep breath. “I was thinking of her again.”

Strade does not understand me, no matter how much he thinks he does. I know that. I know, because he punches me in the face and I feel my nose bending under his fist and smell blood sharp and coppery as it dribbles over my lips. He’s on me only moments after I hit the ground,  pinning me with his entire weight resting on my back, pressing my face into the dirt. I’m having a strong and unsettling sensation of déjà vu.

“So you’re saying you’re ungrateful,” he says, and that calm tone he always has is rapidly disappearing, replaced with an anger unlike anything I’ve heard from him yet, worse than last time, worse than ever. “You’re saying you don’t care that I went to all this trouble for you. Made sure he didn’t rot too bad so he’d be nice and pretty just the way you like them.

I feel something cold, hard and blunt press against my hip through my pants. The tip of a nail gun. I inhale shakily. “I’m sorry,” I start to tell him, but he fires before I have the second word all the way out.

The nail slides straight through the fabric of my pant leg and drives into my flesh, clicking against splintering bone. Strade runs his fingers over the bloodied hole it leaves in a silent threat.

“I should put one between your eyes,” he mutters. “Should dig a hole and bury you with him. Then he’ll be all you have. Worms’ll eat you both.”

“I-I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I’m sorry, please don’t.”

“Yeah? Why shouldn’t I?” He drapes himself over my back and pulls my hair, growling low into my ear. “What do you think this is? Do you think I owe you something? That you _deserve_ something?”

The tip of the nail gun returns, close to the first wound but lower this time. I shake my head, crying softly.

“You don’t get it,” he says. “You remember what I told you before? About beauty?”

( _“Anyone can be made beautiful under the right circumstances,”_ of course I remember. I remember everything he’s ever said.

_“Anyone can be your type.”_

_“You just have to push a little.”_ )

He laughs for the first time since he punched me, but it doesn't make me feel better. “I’m not as picky as you are. I don’t need to kill someone to want them.” He bites down on my earlobe harshly, and at the same time, he pulls the trigger on the nail gun. It skids across my skin as it recoils, firing twice, and the pain makes me feel light-headed and sick. The entire right side of my body is on fire, pain shooting down my leg. I wouldn’t be able to run even if he let me go.

When my screams die down into breathy sobs, he mutters, “You’re my type just the way you are. Don’t forget that.”

I promise him, voice trembling, that I won’t.

Strade gets up but he leaves me there, crying and shaking on the ground, trying to draw up my wounded leg and whimpering. I hear him humming as his footsteps disappear behind me and then his boots cross my field of vision, dragging a shovel behind him.

He starts to dig a hole by the tree line, and I watch the muscles in his back tense as a pile of dirt steadily grows beside him. He walks past me again to get the man’s body,

(and I feel a little guilty, I really do, it’s not that he wasn’t good enough, it’s just that she was _perfect_ )

tosses him in unceremoniously, and then he begins to fill the hole back up. He does this in complete silence, save for his quiet humming, until finally he finishes and comes back to put the shovel in the car.

“You need a hand, buddy?” he asks, kneeling beside me, his usual cheerful demeanor back in place.

I crane my neck to look up at him and find—just as I knew I would—something dark and dangerous lurking in his eyes. “Yes,” I say after a long and uncomfortable silence, and he helps me slowly get to my feet, pulling one of my arms over his shoulder so he can bear the weight of my injured leg.

His smile is tense. He turns on the radio when we’re back in the car and doesn’t say a word to me. As we turn to get back on the trail leading to the road, I see the eyes of coyotes as the headlights flash over them, creeping out of the bushes and pawing at the ground where the man is buried. In the rear-view mirror, I watch the wildflowers vanish into the dark.

*

Strade takes me to the emergency room and tells the nurse we were trying to put together a garden shed and got a little careless. She apparently believes him because I’m the one who gets a stern look. As I hobble down the hall behind her, I glance back and see Strade settling into one of the chairs in the waiting room, watching me go.

He’s not smiling.

I get the distinct impression that he doesn’t think he needs me anymore, either.

**Author's Note:**

> next time:  
> -someone can no longer delay the inevitable


End file.
